Can You Tour the Supreme Court?

Two things surprise people about the Supreme Court, and they pull in opposite directions.

There are no guided tours of the kind you get at the Capitol. And you do not need a ticket, a reservation, or any money to go in.

The basics, from the Court

The Supreme Court Building, at 1 First Street NE, is open to the public Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. It is closed at weekends and on all federal holidays. Admission is free.

You arrive, you clear security, you go in. There is no booking step at all.

That is genuinely unusual for a building of this profile, and it means the Supreme Court is one of the easiest things to add to a Capitol Hill morning — provided your morning is a weekday.

Why “no tours” is not quite “nothing to see”

The building is the setting for oral arguments and a working federal workplace, so what is accessible varies with the Court’s own schedule. What is generally available to a visitor is the public areas of a genuinely impressive 1930s building — it has housed the Court since 1935 — rather than a curated visitor route.

What you will not get is a guide walking you through it on a fixed timetable.

Why tours say “select days only”

If you book a Capitol Hill tour that includes the Supreme Court, read the wording carefully.

The featured tour on this site includes a photo stop and history at the Supreme Court, with entrance available on select days only due to court cases and security — the operator’s own phrasing, which we are repeating rather than softening.

That is not an operator being evasive. It is an accurate description of a working court: when the Court is sitting, or when security requires it, public access to parts of the building changes at short notice. No tour can promise you the interior on a given date.

So if going inside the Supreme Court matters to you, do not rely on a tour to deliver it. Go independently on a weekday morning, when it costs nothing and depends on nobody’s itinerary.

Watching an argument

The Court does admit members of the public to oral arguments when it is sitting. It is genuinely worth doing and it is genuinely not something to improvise: seating is limited, queues form early, and it depends entirely on the Court’s argument calendar.

No guided tour includes this. Treat it as its own plan, built around the Court’s own schedule, rather than as a stop on a Capitol Hill morning.

Practical

Dress: there is no published dress code. It is a working federal courthouse, so ordinary respectful clothing is right — what you would wear to any government building.

Security: airport-style screening, as at the Capitol and the Library. No weapons or sharp objects, no aerosols. Travel light and the queue moves faster.

Timing: the 9 a.m.–3 p.m. weekday window is narrower than most DC attractions, and it is the constraint that most often breaks a plan. A Saturday Capitol Hill day cannot include the Supreme Court at all.

Fitting it into a Capitol Hill morning

The three buildings sit within a few minutes’ walk of one another, which is why they are routinely combined. Their access rules are not combined at all:

• Library of Congress — free, but a free timed-entry pass is required for everyone.
• US Capitol — free, but tours are booked in advance.
• Supreme Court — free, no booking, weekdays 9–3, interior access varies.

A combined guided tour exists to reconcile those three, which is a real service. It just cannot guarantee the one that depends on a sitting court.

Hours and admission checked September 2026 on the Court’s own visitor page.

See Capitol Hill tours that include the Supreme Court